Actor Benjamin Bratt fears he made a terrible first impression upon meeting novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez by speaking terrible Spanish to a man who cherishes the language.
Bratt had just shot the movie adaptation of Marquez's masterpiece Love In The Time Of Cholera when he bumped into the writer in a Los Angeles coffee shop.
In his efforts to impress the author, Bratt decided to speak in Spanish and quickly realised Marquez had no idea what he was saying.
The actor tells Giant magazine, "I started rattling off what I thought was my best Spanish ever... (but) it was like I was speaking Martian because he didn't even pretend to understand me.
"I learned... he has no tolerance for people that speak poor Spanish... He's got a little attitude about it."